


it rained all night | 雨下整夜

by overlord_xmh (okaytlyn)



Category: I.O.I (Band), PRISTIN (Band), Pledis Girlz (Band), SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, F/M, HIV/AIDS, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaytlyn/pseuds/overlord_xmh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it takes years for minghao to realise what his mortal means to him, as the rain pours outside, as the heavens send him an epiphany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it rained all night | 雨下整夜

**Author's Note:**

> my exams start tmr RIP and i don't think i can concentrate until i post this or i'll keep writing  
> inspired by an old jay chou song: 七里香/Common Jasmine Orange  
> eng subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvltkVV5V58  
> im embarassing

 

_The stars shine bright and relentless against the backdrop of a rainy, moonless sky. They sit on the porch, waiting for a miracle to happen. They laugh at their hopes, they smile through the tears._

_Before her eyes flutter shut, she asks Minghao the question she always does before she sleeps._

_"Do you think I'll last till tomorrow?"_

_"Of course," Minghao smiles, like he always does, too,  before she sleeps._

_The leaves falls when the wind sweeps through their branches, and they gather into piles on their lawn. He threads his fingers through her hair and kisses the tips of her nose, as he gathers her up and carries her back to the bedroom. "Don't you dare to even think about meeting me in heaven and all that sap. You aren't a melodrama," he says and although her eyes are closed, she wriggles in his lean arms and laughs._

_"Jack, there's a boat! Jack..." Jieqiong begins to recite lines from the Titanic, before sleep takes over her and she nuzzles into her pillow, a little scared, a little content._

_Minghao gets up and sits by the window, the rain trickling down the window panes, like it'd never stop. But it will just like everything on earth, it will._

_He picks up the pencil, and he starts writing once again. Writes about what she means to him, writes about how he'd never imagine them ending up together like this._

_And Minghao's never going forget the perpetual lilt on her lips whenever they're together. (He writes that down, too.) There’s something so fragile, yet breath-taking about the mortality of a human life, he's determined to bask in her unabashed light and love while she still glows._

 

 

 

His mission on earth wasn’t anything special, just another guardian angel coming down to earth, posing as a classmate, an acquaintance, a neighbour – someone forgettable, yet always there, never fully revealing themselves to their human until potential threats to the human’s life rear their ugly heads.

There were drawbacks to this clause – Minghao had to protect her from threats, as far as possible, but that meant that the day he’d get to introduce himself would be pushed back further. But repressing the urge to show himself only made him long to speak to the girl even more, making life an unnecessary dilemma. A dilemma he had wasted time on when there were other pressing dangers out there that he hadn’t noticed, that he should have noticed.

Throughout her years of schooling, Zhou Jieqiong grew up to be healthy kid, placing 2nd or 3rd during cross-country competitions in school, earning herself various accolades in gymnastics events and excelling in her academics. Jieqiong was a good, bright kid and despite being a newbie in the guardian field (and being born barely a generation before her), he’d always have an indescribable swelling in his chest, of aggressive, motherly pride.

In elementary school, he was the teacher of the class beside hers. In middle school, he was employed as the male nurse in the school’s sports physiology centre – because god knows how many times she was sent in after getting bruises from games and over-exertion.

And then, high school came, along with Jieqiong’s first love, and he’d be happy for her like the other angels would be for their mortal, if not for the twisted tug at his heart.

 

 

 

“Minghao, are you jealous?” Seungcheol nudged Minghao with his over-priced latte in hand, as they sat on a bench in the park with their shades on. Seungcheol had the whole pretentious office-worker in their twenties aesthetic down pat and his mortal, Joshua Hong, would never even suspect his identity. After all, Seungcheol was just his neighbour, and that regular who’d always watch his busking performances in the park after office hours.

Minghao shifted uncomfortably in his place. “Me? Jealous? Never. I’m proud she got to this milestone in her life, you know. First love,” he mutters as he watches Jieqiong holding hands with a boy in her grade, Kim Mingyu – who was all sun-kissed skin, muscles, winning smiles and well, he drove a _car._ A decent guy, he had seemed _._ At least it was him that Jieqiong chose to date instead of the other guys in her grade - that she’d never know about – competing for her affections. Because if it were any of them, the whole Sit On A Window Ledge Watching _It_ Go Down Between Your Mortal And Her Partner would have to happen sooner than he’d like.

Seungcheol laughed heartily, sipping from his vanilla affogato. “Kid, the negative aura around you is literally pulsing through the air. You’re totally jealous.”

“Am not. We can’t feel for our mortals _that_ way.”

“We can, but most of the time, it’s a passing affection, disguised as romantic love. In the end, we all are concerned and care for our mortals until the end of the contract, so some confusion regarding our feelings is bound to happen. I mean, I totally thought Yoon Jeonghan, you know, my mortal from the past generation – wait you weren’t carnated yet, but anyway,  - I totally thought I fell for Jeonghan _that_ way for the first week I was contracted to him. And then, it went away.”

Minghao wasn’t listening, really. His mortal and her new boyfriend were walking towards them and he rolled his eyes from behind his shades. Kim Mingyu had shyly let go of his hand that’s holding Jieqiong’s and puts it around her shoulders. _Ugh, kids. Young love. The Mingyu kid’s trembling in his shoes – oh, great they’re buying shitty ice-cream from the side vendor._

“Aww, your mortal’s being so cute with her boyfriend,” Seungcheol cooed.

“She’s being embarrassing.” _And she’s about to be a lot more embarrassing, considering that a large uprooted woody vine’s around five meters in front of her, and her track record says that she’d totally trip over it._

Minghao had gotten up from the bench and strided towards the murderous root and pretended to drop something, bending over and possibly hording off the whole area.

Jieqiong and Mingyu did a detour. Jieqiong didn’t trip. When they had gone further than ten metres away, he got up and returned to Seungcheol.

“Nice one, kid.”

“God, I do this everyday. Nothing new. She walks into traffic without looking both ways, rams into girls twice her size when she plays basketball in her neighbourhood.”

“Man, that’s tough. Joshua’s kind of a safe guy. Oh, his fiancée is here already, she’s going to pick him up now. Gotta go!”

Minghao had waved goodbye to the older angel. From a distance, Jieqiong lied on Mingyu’s tummy on the picnic mat, and Minghao had sweared that he’d never seen her this calm and _placid_ in her seventeen competitive, fast-paced years of life. All the vanilla, all the looks of sickening infatuation clings to the both of them and Minghao could only watch while struggling with the new foreign feeling that bubbled upwards, upwards, but he says nothing.

_A passing affection, Seungcheol said. It’d go away, he said._

It never did.

 

 

 

Three years down the road, the Board of Transient Positions in Heaven issues him a notice that placings in educational institute careers were limited, leaving him to become a student instead at Jieqiong’s university, instead of a professor or an admin guy or the security guard at her dorms.

This makes things worse really. Sure, he had no problem fitting in looks-wise – he had stopped aging at twenty-one and at this point he even looked younger than Jieqiong. But there’s no easy way that he’d be able to keep an eye on her without seeming like a stalker, or, well, becoming her friend. His invisibility powers aren’t stable at all, since he’s still in his first incarnation cycle, and most newbies on their first contract only have sparse, minimum invisibility powers to hide their wings. That was about it. Minghao was lucky to have enough invisibility to hide both his wings, his arms and his upper back, but the extra parts didn’t have much use. _It wasn’t like he could walk around campus looking like a head floating above half a torso and long, scrawny legs anyway._

By all means, Minghao was fine with skipping classes to look out for Jieqiong, but he knew that if his attendance became too awry, he’d get called up and all, and he’d attract attention. It didn’t help that he was also put in an English Literature course with Jieqiong – why thank you, heaven – that he’d most likely fail.

Another problem that arose was that Jieqiong seemed to be friends with _anyone_ and _everyone_ , which meant he had to stay away from her friend circle in case they mentioned him to her– practically equating to him having to live a loner. A pretty tough feat in university, especially in his Business major where group projects came around every term.

Thankfully, Minghao managed to befriend Soonyoung, a fellow angel who detected his aura from two buildings away, and requested for a roommate change to be with him. The switch from interacting with many people in Minghao’s previous professions as a teacher, nurse, cafeteria server, to this introversion-ridden world where Soonyoung was his only outlet and roommate, was pretty jarring. Soonyoung had suggested he pretend he was an anti-social emo to fend off friends. However, it backfired – emos attracted emos, and he received requests to attend private house gatherings, and also, dubious texts asking him out for _weed and chill_ from people even outside his faculty, both girls and guys.

“Damn, Soonyoung, you said this would keep me low profile,” Minghao whines as he flops onto Soonyoung’s bed.

“I don’t understand it either, honestly. Your dark eye circles and black hoodie-clad skinny ass seems to make people think you’re tall, dark and mysterious. Well, as long as you’re someone Jieqiong wouldn’t care about, I think it’s an _okay_ way of life.  Your image on campus is the opposite of her type so you’re going good.”

Minghao glares at Soonyoung from under the covers. It’s kind of sad that being someone she wouldn’t give a second look was the ideal situation, but he’ll live. “Today a girl asked me what eye-shadow I used for my lower lids,” Minghao states lifelessly.

“You use eyeshadow?” Soonyoung stares back, puzzled.

“No, you dumbass, it’s my panda eyes, it’s getting so bad. I can only watch over Jieqiong at nights nowadays since she’s so hard to follow around during waking hours, and she’d be with her boyfriend, that’s totally cheating on her, and I think I look like a dead racoon. I’m tired, Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung doesn’t know how to help him. Soonyoung’s a popular senior in gymnastics, at the top of his visual communications course. His mortal’s a sophomore named Lee Seokmin – a painfully introverted kid in choir, majoring in marine biology. There’s zero chance that their paths would cross, heck, Soonyoung doesn’t even need to _try_ avoiding him. Soonyoung’s also a senior angel, which meant that he had acquired enough invisibility to be by Seokmin’s side whenever he’s around potential threats. Seokmin doesn’t even go out and sleeps at 10pm – he’s so safe, so easy to protect.

All angels have a spiritual tracker of sorts connected to the location of their mortal, and Soonyoung’s one always tells him that Seokmin’s at the library, or in class, or in his dorm. Minghao’s almost jealous at how Soonyoung seems to have such an easy contract. Meanwhile, he’s has three classes with her and has to stay at the same block while charading as someone as bleak as the forgettable wallpaper on the walls of their lecture halls. The odds are sure as hell _not_ in his favour.

 

 

He’s done with his last night class of the day, and his tracker tells him that Jieqiong’s at a bar, one expressway and fourteen streets away from their university. It’s kind of surprising that she’s there _that_ late especially since she had gym practice in the evening, but it definitely wouldn’t surprise him if her boyfriend Mingyu would.

He flies over to check it out anyway and enters the bar with his t-shirt, joggers and slippers, feeling extremely under-dressed. He tugs over his trademark hood over his head, looking like someone from Assassin’s Creed rather than a Heaven-sent angel. The conversation between Jieqiong and Mingyu is mumbled and near inaudible, so he hops onto a barstool two seats away from them and orders needlessly expensive Sprite, because he can’t afford to be drunk.

“Mingyu, stop drinking,” Jieqiong says worriedly as Mingyu calls for yet another shot of soju. She puts a hand around the small of his back, only for it to be shrugged off by Mingyu as he chugs down the shot.

“Stop. I don’t care, alright, I have something to tell you and _would you stop looking at me with those fucking eyes, I don’t need that kind of concern right now, Qiong.”_

“But you said you brought me here to tell me something important, so spill it, it’s getting late,” Jieqiong says impatiently, and Minghao thinks he hears Mingyu _growl._

“You should have a glass of your own, Jieqiong. Don’t blame me if your gut can’t handle it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Mingyu. Handle what?”

Something in Minghao’s own angelic gut tells him that things are going to turn awry in _T-minus 20 seconds, 19, 18-_

“So here, Jieqiong, you’re a nice girl and all,” Mingyu starts, and oh, so that’s where he’s heading.

“And like, high school was great but,” Mingyu pauses to take a gulp.

“But? What do you mean but-“ Jieqiong probes, and Mingyu bursts out, hand slapping the table. “If you’d shut the fuck up, we’ll get this over faster.”

_… 13, 12, 11-_

“So like, I’m getting tired. Of this. Of us.” Mingyu’s voice is hollow and apathetic, like he’s stopped caring a long time ago.

“Why?” Jieqiong’s voice is near distraught, and she reaches for Mingyu’s hands but he flinches away. Minghao suppresses the urge to pull Mingyu up by the collar and break his nose.

_… 8, 7, 6-_

“We have, we’ve got different needs and I swear I tried to wait, but. Say I’ve changed, and I’d agree. But you haven’t changed and I’ll spare you the dickhead details, so I think, it’s better to end it here.”

_… 3,_

“End it? You can’t be serious we’ve been tight for four years-”

…2,

“I mean it. Let’s break up.”

_… 1._

Mingyu doesn’t finish his last shot. He stands up and leaves, taking the car with him. _Great, I hope your liver burns in hell with you._

Jieqiong’s left staring after Mingyu’s disappearing figure. There are no tears, but she grips her own glass of mocktail in her fingers and bites her lower lip till it bleeds.

Finally, she looks up and tells the bartender to get her a glass of the strongest alcohol they have, and Minghao, in alarm, puts up his hand and beckons the bartender over.

“You want something too?” the bartender – Junhui, his tags say, - looks over at him.

“Listen, get that girl the lightest beer you have – I’ve seen her alcohol tolerance and she can’t drink for shit. I don’t want her out cold on the sidewalk tomorrow. Can you do that for me, uh, Junhui?”

Junhui laughs as he looks at Jieqiong who’s staring at her phone like she’d be able to murder it with her gaze.

“Alright, buddy. You’re paying though.”

He was going to, anyway.

 

-

 

 

Jieqiong wakes up, tucked snugly in bed, and the night before seems like a horrifying nightmare.

She knows it isn’t a nightmare though, when she sees her smudged eyeliner in the mirror and opens her Kakaotalk to see that Mingyu’s blocked her.

And maybe, reality holds more horror than a nightmare would ever give.

 

She doesn’t go to class that day, and it’s only after an evening of swollen, burning eyes, ice-cream and missed calls that she realises something very out of place.

She doesn’t remember how she got back into her apartment. If Mingyu took her car, and she left her dorm key in his car-

The open window at the side of their room lets in a gust of wind, and the curtains flutter.

_Not through the window. Impossible._

It’s eleven at night and _maybe I should sleep, huh._ Jieqiong pads over to the switch and turns the lights off, going back to the bed and bringing the covers up to her shoulders.

_There’s no way I could have gotten back by foot._

The wind blows again, and this time, the only source of light from the room is from outside. From behind the curtains, she thinks she sees the shadow of a wing, a large wing.

Scared, and confused, she tips toes to the ledge, but by the time she gets there, there’s nothing.

 

Only a note scrawled across the back of a receipt - “don’t wait for his explanation, it’s not worth it.”

 

-

 

 

Two months pass, and Jieqiong's determined to prove her ex that she  _can_  provide others with the 'needs' he had never gotten, the 'needs' that tore them apart. 

Two months pass, and Minghao’s doing the whole Sit On A Window Ledge Watching It Go Down Between Your Mortal And Her Partner _(s)_ almost every three days, except sometimes it’s not even on a window ledge, sometimes he watches from a club, a bar, some bloke’s ratty dorm.

He feels wrong, he feels like a voyeur and Minghao has to physically tear his eyes away, waiting for his tracker to signal her moving away to get back to looking after her. It’s the hardest two weeks of his life, watching Jieqiong fling herself into a warzone of possibly dangerous routes and not being able to do anything, because sex, after all, was a natural process and barring it between humans (unless it got abusive or life-threatening) was against the rules. All because of a certain Kim Mingyu who had broken her heart – and she thought she had to _prove_ him wrong.

_At what price? Losing your virginity to some senior in football who had taken advantage of you because you turned up at the gathering, eyes wide and lost? You thought you were growing up, huh, as he surveyed your body like a predator contemplating how to consume its prey. You thought you had one-upped Mingyu when you grinded on someone else on the dance floor, and he saw it, and he dropped his glass. It shattered to the floor, and you think your actions shattered his heart. You think this is revenge?_

_Jieqiong, in the long run, you mean nothing to them. You are a one night stand, you are an ex, you are a thing of the past, a trophy, an accolade they hang around their necks to somewhat prove their worth through hyper-masculinity. “I fucked Zhou Jieqiong,” they say when they gather in their rooms, nursing a beer, and then others cheer. For them. Like they’ve scaled a mountain. And then, they rate you, review the night’s events like you were a piece of tender, undercooked steak. I’ve seen it, I’ve listened to them as they spoke. Kim Mingyu did sigh at others’ description of how you_ were, _but child, it wasn’t because he still loved you. It wasn’t because he regretted breaking up, wasn’t because he wanted to turn back time to when you both were blubbering, lovesick high-schoolers._

_He was right, Jieqiong. He’s changed. He’s not the kid who’d gladly give up an afternoon to be with you at the pet shelter anymore. He’s tired of waiting for you to end practice, he’s tired of being attached when there are other flinging themselves at both you and him. When he sighed, Jieqiong, he did it because he’s disappointed he didn’t coax the virgin out of you earlier, that he didn’t get a shot._

_But Jieqiong, I wish you’d know. Just because almost everyone has changed, doesn’t mean that you have to. Please never change, because I know you’re already getting tired of this. It’s selfish to ask of you to, but I can dream, can’t I? It’s not like you’d notice me, not like you should._

_Please stop soon. I don’t think I can watch you spread open beneath someone else for much longer. Your soul is in pain and I’m feeling it too, the magnitude twice as much as it is within me than in you. You don’t know, do you? The tracker connects us._

 

_-_

 

It’s kind of weird how nowadays, Jieqiong’s got this nagging feeling at the back of her mind that someone’s watching her. The whole night after she broke up with Mingyu was one thing, but the presence that seems to follow her seems familiar. Comforting even. In a place where everything’s foreign, ever-changing, the someone, or _something_ feels like it’s been watching her ever since she’s been born and it should creep her out but, well.

It’s scary how it doesn’t scare her. It’s puzzling how she’s not puzzled at its presence.

 

-

 

_It’s getting harder for me to hide myself, to restrain myself, when I see what others are doing to you, what you’re doing to yourself. There’s been one too many times where I haven’t been careful enough, and as much as I want to meet you, hold you in my arms and let you cry into my chest instead of Mingyu’s varsity jacket (that doesn’t deserve your embrace, at all), I don’t want you in danger, but in order for me to reveal myself, you have to be. It’s three strikes of letting you figure who I am, and I’m out, and there’s no such thing as cheating the eyes of heaven._

_Watching over you hurts. Maybe it’s because I’m a newbie at this, maybe other angels get better at caring for only the relevant things as they rise up the ranks._

_And me? I’m helpless – in the sense, that I cannot help you. I can only watch as you self-destruct._

 

 

-

 

 

It's been three months since she's broken up with Kim Mingyu. Jieqiong exercises almost every alternate day at the gymnasium. Gets laid every weekend. Placed 2nd in the Balance Beam event during regional championships last week.

She feels... healthy. Happy enough, she guesses, to function. Sated.

 

-

 

It takes three months for Minghao to realize that there's something horribly wrong growing in her body - that he's already let a threat take stronghold over Jieqiong, right under his nose. 

And this time, it's from the inside.

 


End file.
